


Dancing With My Neighbor

by quartermile



Series: Neighbors [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist!Steve, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, M/M, Neighbors, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Stucky - Freeform, Vet!bucky, a little bit of shy!steve, adorable Bucky, former dancer!bucky, neighbor series, not sure if I like how this one turned out, not sure really what to tag this as, steve is quite ooc in this series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:31:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4599939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quartermile/pseuds/quartermile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this story, we meet some of Bucky’s family right along with Steve. We also find out a little more about Bucky’s brief past as a dancer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing With My Neighbor

When Steve lets himself into Bucky’s apartment when he wakes up on Saturday morning, he’s expecting Bucky to still be in bed so he can go crawl in beside him until he wakes up fully, or at least a groggy, not yet shaven Bucky shuffling around his kitchen for breakfast. 

He doesn’t expect to nearly be whacked upside the head by the polished wooden and glass display box that holds Bucky’s war medals but that’s exactly what he finds himself facing.

“What the hell!” Steve shouts as he manages to dodge it, but just barely. He feels the edge of the box just barely graze the top of his ear. His eyes widen as he spots his would be attacker, a small brunette girl with an expression that’s just as shocked as he feels. 

“Bethany! Put that down!” Bucky exclaims, suddenly in the room. Another girl – who’s pretty heavily pregnant that must be Bucky’s sister, follows him quickly and laughs at the scene as Bucky snatches the box from the girl he now knows as Bethany, “Can you not attack my boyfriend?”

“He just walked in, Jamie! I thought he was some guy about to rob you!” the girl – Bethany? – shouts.

“Some random guy on the fourth floor when he could probably hear you guys’ loud ass mouths from a mile away?” He challenges with a single quirked eyebrow, cupping Steve’s face in his hands and inspecting his face for injury.

“I’m fine, Buck. She didn’t hit me,” Steve says, his cheeks heating up at the attention.

“I’m sorry about the little runt,” Bucky says, placing a kiss to the end of his nose once he’s satisfied Steve is free of injury, “That’s my baby sister, Beth.”

“I’m not a baby! I’m sixteen!” Bethany protests immediately, long suffering. 

Bucky just rolls his eyes, “This is my boyfriend, Steve, that you just nearly attacked. I told you he’d probably come over at some point. Great first impression you made,” he says, reaching over to muss her hair, “Stevie, these are my sisters. They ambushed me this morning. I’ve been up since seven thanks to them.” He teases.

“You wouldn’t know what to do without us, Jamie,” the pregnant one says with a smile, walking over to pull Steve into a hug, “I’m his older sister, Rebecca. Everybody calls me Becca, though.”

Steve returns the hug only somewhat shyly, “Pleasure to meet you.” He says to them.

“Ma! Come here!” Becca shouts into the kitchen, though anyone in the kitchen could probably easily hear a normal speaking volume, “Steve is here!”

“Steve!” A slightly older looking version of Rebecca exclaims, flying full speed at him and pulling him into a motherly hug that startles Steve a little at the force of it. It’s nothing at all like the comfort of one of Bucky’s hugs, but it’s a close thing.

“Hi Mrs. Barnes,” Steve says.

“Nonsense, call me Winifred or Freddie,” she says, cupping his cheeks much like Bucky had done moments earlier, smiling, “Oh look at you. Jamie, you did pick a cute one.”

Steve goes red to the tips of his ears and he ducks his head when she lets go, “It’s nice to meet you all.”

“Ma,” Bucky whines a little, cheeks a little pink himself, “Don’t scare him off.”

Steve feels his heart absolutely melt, then, when he notices Bucky holding who has to be his third and youngest sister. She’s got her small hands curled into the fabric of Bucky’s t-shirt, holding onto him like she’s scared he’ll disappear if she lets go, her head on his shoulder. He remembers Bucky saying she’s got a little hero-worship.

“And who’s this?” he asks, smiling at her when he notices her peering at him shyly. Bucky subtly extracts Steve from Mama Barnes’ arms before she squeezes him hard enough his eyes pop out like a stress toy. Bucky’s been on the receiving end of plenty of her hugs and believe him, they can do that.

“This is Ruby. Say hi, Ruby Roo,” Bucky prompts once she doesn’t answer, bouncing her a little. 

She lifts her head and waves, “I’m six,” she states before burying her face in Bucky’s neck.

“That’s good to know,” Steve grins at her since he can see her eyes just poking out from where she’s looking through Bucky’s hair. He tickles her side lightly and laughs as she squirms in Bucky’s hold, a little giggle sounding from his neck.

“Stop acting shy,” Bucky teases, playfully and gently pinching her sides so she shrieks and wiggles in his grasp, “You’re the furthest thing from shy!”

“’Top Jamie!” She squeals, a little bit of a childhood lisp coloring her speech.

“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to warn you about them,” Bucky stage whispers, ducking to dodge the pillow from the couch that Rebecca picks up and lobs at him, “Sit down, Bex.”

“I am a beach ball,” She jokes as she sits herself down on the couch with a soft sigh. 

“I think technically, the baby is a beach ball, not you,” Bucky teases, sitting Ruby on her feet. She immediately whines and grips at his wrist, trying to crawl back up him or get him to pick her back up, “Not right now, Rube.” he protests, rotating his left shoulder as if it’s bothering him.

_It probably is_ Steve realizes with a sort of sinking feeling in his stomach. Bucky’d told him about the nerve damage and that it still bothers him sometimes, but Steve had actually not seem him favoring the limb before so he thought maybe it didn’t bother him. He kind of feels stupid for that assumption. It stands to reason that the weight of a six year old could aggravate his arm enough to hurt.

“Are you okay, Jamie?” Freddie asks, having caught the movement as well. She nudges Ruby over to the couch to sit even as she pouts and levels a pleading look at Bucky.

“Jamie?” Steve teases once he sees that Bucky looks a little uncomfortable about his mom’s question. He wonders if it’s just something he’s not comfortable with discussing altogether – although he seemed pretty at ease when he originally told him about it – or if he’s just uncomfortable in the face of his mother’s concern. 

“They’ve called me that since I was like, three,” Bucky says, “It drives me nuts.”

“Well you still call me a baby all the time so,” Bethany says.

“To me, you still are one,” he replies.

“Well to us, so are you, Jamie,” Becca tells him.

“You’re only two years older than me!” Bucky exclaims, “You were practically still a baby when I was!”

“But I’m still older,” Becca grins.

Bucky rolls his eyes and sits himself down on the floor in front of where Steve had sat on the couch, leaning back between his legs. It feels oddly intimate enough in front of Bucky’s family that Steve feels a blush creeping up.

“When is your bake sale for Veteran’s Day, Beth?” Bucky asks.

“It’s on the seventeenth,” she replies, “We’re having a program for it, too. I was kind of hoping you’d come and talk, maybe?” Steve gets the feeling she had a whole line of pleading prepared to bring up when she asked Bucky about it, but Bucky asking about it himself threw it off.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, B,” Bucky says, starting to rub at his shoulder again. Steve doesn’t think he even realizes he’s doing it, “but I’d be happy to make something for the bake sale. Wanna help me Stevie?” he asks, leaning his head back to look up at Steve.

“Yeah, okay,” Bethany shrugs, looking a bit disappointed. For all that she looked ready to plead, she doesn’t seem too surprised. He gets the feeling this is something they’ve discussed before. He wonders if Bucky has more feelings about his time in the Army than he’d previously let on. 

“Sure,” he replies, reaching down and nudging Bucky’s hand away from his shoulder discreetly, starting to massage his shoulders. Bucky gives a pleasured grunt that makes Steve’s blush come back full force along with a dirty thought or two.

“Steve is an amazing baker. He brings me cookies and cupcakes all the time,” Bucky dotes and Steve gives a shy smile, fighting the urge to brush off the compliment.

“I really like to bake,” Steve shrugs.

“Who taught you?” Freddie asks, “My grandma taught me more than my mother did,” she laughs, “My mom could cook if you put a recipe in front of her but my grandma is who created most of those recipes so she was kind of the go to if you needed to learn something.”

Steve smiles at her little story, “My mom taught me. I was sick a lot as a kid and it was just me and her. Since I was home a lot and bored, my mom always demonstrated how she cooked things to kind of give us something to do together that didn’t put much strain on me. I used to be allergic to a lot of foods that I’ve luckily grown out of now but since there was so much I couldn’t eat, she got really creative with the things I could eat. You wouldn’t believe all of the strange things we used to eat,” he laughs, “but my favorite really is baking. I love sweets.”

“Has Bucky made you his caramel cake yet? It’s delicious,” Becca says, making a slurping noise then squeaks when Bucky throws a pillow at her.

“Shh!” he exclaims. Bucky grunts when Ruby comes over and plops herself down in his lap. Steve wonders if Bucky looked anything like Ruby as a child, because if he did he was absolutely adorable. He thinks Ruby is the sister that looks most like Bucky already.

“Oh, so you’ve been holding out on me!” Steve accuses in mock outrage.

Bucky tilts his head back to look up at him with the biggest puppy eyes Steve has ever seen. His heart may or may not have just melted, “I thought if you knew I was alright in the kitchen, you wouldn’t bake for me anymore,” he says.

“Oh, pft. I love showering you with homemade stuff,” Steve grins, leaning down to peck Bucky’s lips. He thinks he may hear the camera sound on Bethany’s phone but he ignores it so he doesn’t feel embarrassed.

“And I love eating them,” he says, scrunches his nose. His body jerks slightly as he chunks a pillow at Bethany without even looking at her, laughing and turning to look at her once she squeaks, “Stop taking pictures of our intimate moments.”

“But it was cute!” Bethany protests.

“Oh God, please don’t say intimate moments again,” Becca groans.

“I have to agree with Becca,” Steve says, playfully tugging Bucky’s hair.

“Traitor,” Bucky mutters, laughing as Steve flicks his ear in retaliation.

“Oh Ma, guess who lives here, too?” Bucky says suddenly, letting Ruby braid pieces of his hair messily.

“Who?” she asks.

“Natasha,” he replies, “She’s Clint, my landlord’s girlfriend. She’s still dancing.”

“Oh that’s fantastic!” Freddie says, “She was always such an amazing dancer. How is she doing? She’s dancing professionally now? I missed seeing her after you stopped dancing.”

“She seems happy now,” Bucky replies, “What is it that she does, Steve?” he asks, tilting his head back again to look up at him.

“She teaches ballet and participates in the recitals and occasional competitions. She was with the New York Ballet for a while but she doesn’t do that anymore. She still dances sometimes for certain productions,” Steve explains.

“That’s amazing for her,” Freddie says with a smile, “I always said you’d go far if you’d kept at it.”

“I know you did,” Bucky laughs, looking up at Steve, “She didn’t talk to me for about a week when I quit.”

“Why did you quit?” Steve asks as Freddie laughs, “How’d you get into it?”

“Mom put me in dance classes because I always had so much energy, it was keeping me from sleeping enough and I couldn’t concentrate well in class. It gave me something to do with all of that energy. I liked it but my heart wasn’t really in it, you know?” Bucky answers, “That’s really why I quit. Natasha and I were paired up as partners once we started competing and we won a lot, but like I said. My heart wasn’t in it. She deserved to have someone as committed to it as she was and I wasn’t putting all I could into it either anymore. I only danced for about two, two and a half years but Nat and I were close for a while. I mean, we spent every day together. I missed her, too.”

“I’m glad you two can reconnect now,” Becca says, rubbing her rounded belly, “I always thought they were dating.”

“We never dated,” Bucky says with an eye roll as if he spent a lot of time saying that, “Red – we all called her Red Death ‘cause she was ruthless and a badass, she would have kicked my ass and handed it back to me on a plate.”

Steve laughs at the imagery and rolls his eyes as well, “Well I’m glad she never did, ‘cause you have a great ass.”

Bucky startles out a laugh and nudges Ruby off of his lap, standing and holding out a hand, “Dance with me!”

Steve’s eyes widen and he shakes his head, backing away from Bucky’s advance, “I can’t dance! I have two left feet.”

“It’s alright. I’ll lead and you can stand on my feet,” Bucky grins, “We won’t be doing ballet. I’m probably far too rusty for that anyway.” 

“Okay,” Steve answers after a moment of deliberation. He extends his hand and lets Bucky take it in his own, allowing him to pull him to his feet.

“Turn on some music, Beth,” Bucky says, waiting until the music fills the room before starting to lead Steve into a slow, simple dance. They mostly just sway and step, the loose braids in Bucky’s hair slowly unraveling as they move.

Bethany jumps up as well, pulling Ruby to her feet, laughing as the two of them start to dance as well.

Steve reminds himself to put an evening out dancing on the list of potential future dates. He thinks he could get used to this.

**Author's Note:**

> *cough* the next one will have smut *cough*


End file.
